Bella Vista is given a gift of green

It's not money, but space - a spot
for trees to put down roots.

By Rita Giordano
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

They knew it might not be forever but,
still, they planted trees.

Graceful golden-rain trees with cascading
yellow blossoms. Slate-barked rubbers, trident maples,
flowering crab apples. Trees with the pluck to withstand city
life and hard winters. The members of Bel Arbor, a group of
South Philadelphia urban gardeners, knew they were planting on
borrowed land and borrowed time. They hoped for the best.

Who would have guessed they'd get it?

"The exciting news," said Bel
Arbor president
Carla Puppin, "is the owner of the
property,
who is a New York aeveloper, decided to
donate it."

Bel Arbor was already three years into a
five-year agreement allowing them to
operate
a tree farm on about one-third of an acre
on
the 1000 block of Kimball Street in Bella
Vista.
The Kimball Street Community Garden is
adjacent, as are two commercial parcels
on Washington Avenue developed by Lenard Thylan.

The gardeners had asked Thylan to
consider donating the Kimball Street land but were told he
wanted to use it for residential development. City Councilman
Frank DiCicco lobbied on the gardeners' behalf, while they
wondered if they could ever cobble together the money to buy
the property.

In the end, they didn't have to. To their
amazement, Thylan gave it to them.

"I thought it would benefit the
community as well as our stores on Washington Avenue," the
developer said.

Thylan, of course, does get some benefit
from his charity. He figured the value of the tax write-off
would be about the same as the profit he would have gotten if
he had developed the property. Plus, he said, the promise of
permanent green space can only enhance the value of two
commercial properties on Washington Avenue, which include a CVS
pharmacy.

Still, at a time when property values
continue to soar - and neighborhoods such as Bella Vista have
started to feel the ripple effect of escalating prices in Queen
Village and Society Hill - the gardeners weren't holding their
breath for a freebie.

"It's unusual for a private owner to
donate a piece of land that has value to it," said Terry
Mushovic, executive director of the Neighborhood Gardens
Association, a Philadelphia nonprofit dedicated to preserving
community gardens.

The Kimball Street plot was actually
donated to the gardens association for the continued use of the
Bella Vista neighbors.

In fact, Bel Arbor's newfound sense of
security makes it a little bit unusual. Aside from public
parks, most community greening projects - often lovingly tended
oases tilled on formerly garbage-strewn lots - have no
guarantees of their continued existence. Many are located on
derelict private or publicly owned lots, and the citizens who
have turned them from eyesore to asset have no legal or
long-term claim to the land.

Last spring's battle between New York
City greening activists and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was a case
in point.

In the municipal-budget equivalent of
rolling up spare pennies, Giuliani decided to put some 112
city-owned parcels that had been turned into community gardens
on the auction block. Many were in the city's poorest
neighborhoods, and community members, who in some cases had
rescued the land from blight years before, cried foul.
Giuliani's response was that if the gardeners wanted to keep
the properties, they should buy them.

The day before the auction, entertainer
Bette Midler came to the gardeners' rescue. Through her private
conservation group, the New York Restoration Project, Midler
came up with $1.2 million to buy 51 of the lots, plus $1
million that enabled the Trust for Public Land, another
conservation group, to buy the other parcels for a total of $3
million. The gardens were saved.

Over the years, however, some community
gardens in Philadelphia have not been so fortunate. Even Bel
Arbor had already moved its trees more than once around
Thylan's land as he developed it.

Still, the Bella Vista neighbors managed
to create something special, well before they knew it would be
for keeps. At the 1999 City Gardens Contests, their Kimball
Street Community Garden, located on land belonging to the
Christ Presbyterian Church, took first place. Bel Arbor took
second place in the tree-farm competition. On land that backs
up to the commercial spine of Washington Avenue, they have
created a wildflower meadow and planted butterfly-attracting
bushes and about 40 young trees.

This spring, as the Bel Arbor members
always intended, the first of those trees will be old enough to
transplant onto residential blocks in the neighborhood. The
planting will be done with the help of a National Tree Trust
grant, and the Bel Arbor members will continue to help with
tree care for the first two years.

For most of the Bel Arbor's urban
gardeners, tree growing was a different and distinct
horticultural pursuit.

"A zucchini, if you mess up, it's no
big deal. But a tree should last," said Stanley Bielen,
42, an artist who paints the roses he grows in the garden and
is also active in the tree farm.

The tree farm and the garden seem to have
led to something else lasting - friendships among neighbors and
a sense of community.

"It's almost more than gardening.
It's a way of bringing people together," said Claudia
Archer, 37, a caterer.

In a neighborhood where some of the older
residents have passed on and new families have moved in over
the past several years, the Kimball Street plots have become a
place of meeting and discovery for a new generation, children
such as Archer's 5-year-old daughter, Page, and her buddies.

"We put a sandbox out there,"
Archer said. "The kids love to pick raspberries, and the
strawberries never get past pale pink. It's like a gross-out
contest. 'I can eat sorrel.' 'Well, I can eat Thai basil.'
"
And then, of course, there are the trees.
Some were barely two feet when they were planted. Puppin,
laughing at herself, calls them "babies" and can't
help fretting a bit over how they will fare.

"I guess I'm a little bit
nervous," she said. "I hope the new owners will take
good care of them."
A teacher of art history, Puppin can see
the trees from her backyard.

"I find myself going out, watching
them," she said. "In the spring, it's incredible to
watch the buds come. You can almost watch them grow."
Even in these bare-limbed months, she
sees beauty.

"Looking at a tree in winter,"
Puppin said, "you can see the structure."

Now it appears she and her neighbors will
have that beauty to tend and enjoy for many years to come.